S1.E06:

[statsgirl]

Quote

As his hearing approaches, Bill's academic future comes into question. Ji-Yoon's revelation puts the board on the spot and shakes up the department.

 

[Snapdragon]

So I just finished this and overall found it pretty "meh".  I like Sandra Oh and Taylor Holland and the show was pleasant enough but there wasn't really anything gripping about it.  I found all of the students annoying, most of the faculty didn't have any depth and for all the issues they presented (ageism, sexism, cancel culture, trans-racial adoption, etc.), they didn't really explore any of them fully so it didn't feel like the show had that much to say about any of them.  Is this meant to have another season?  Because I felt like everything was pretty much wrapped up at the end of the last episode.   

[DB in CMH]

I too felt like it wrapped up pretty well. 

So, who on the show has worked at a college or university? Because, as a junior faculty at small college in a humanities department, they absolutely fucking nailed it. Everything about it. Right down to the old professor not being able to work the copy machine, not bothering to look at student evaluations, young faculty needing to bite their tongues around older faculty (I have a colleague who still hauks around aTV cart with VHS!), and the Title IX officer being expected to do 8 other jobs, and none of them well. I could go on and on and on.

For the record, all of our offices look like Holland Taylor's. 

For me, it was six episodes of cringe comedy. While narratively I didn't think it was the best show in the world, I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Edited August 21, 2021 by DB in CMH

[Kirsty]

I really enjoyed this and I would have liked more episodes! I appreciate the variety of humour in the show ie. witty lines, pratfalls, making fun of the old professors, cringe-inducing situations, culture clashes, Duchovny singing! etc.

It was great fun and almost all of the characters got to show us more than one side. Like, that little scene with the old white male (Melville) professor going to bed with his wife really showed another dimension to the character. And no one's issues were dismissed. I could see that Bill wasn't a Nazi and I could also see that the students were right. Too bad he couldn't apologise to them in the first place.

I was glad there was no big romantic gesture and happy ever after with Ji-Yoon and Bill. I found him very attractive but he was such a mess! It was very satisfying every time he was called out on his bullshit. You'd really like to see him standing on his own two feet before he joins another family.

Though I was disappointed when Ji-Yoon lost the Chair, Joan getting it and loving it was a nice consolation prize. Holland Taylor was great. And I take it Yaz is going to Yale and Lila is set?

I guess my only criticism is that it didn't have much of an ending.

But well played Sandra Oh and brava Amanda Peet! I didn't know Amanda Peet was a writer but what a debut as showrunner. This reminded me of the best network TV shows I watched growing up. Actually, it reminds me a little of Aaron Sorkin's stuff. I hope we get more shows from Peet.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Kirsty

[dubbel zout]

15 hours ago, DB in CMH said:

While narratively I didn't think it was the best show in the world, I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Same. I think it was trying to be a few too many things at the same time, but Sandra Oh is always worth watching.

David Duchovny was a very good sport. 

10 hours ago, Kirsty said:

I could see that Bill wasn't a Nazi and I could also see that the students were right.

Bill should not have given the Nazi salute, but I understood what he meant by it. I think the show deliberately made the students have a knee-jerk reaction to show how context is so important for these kinds of things. And once it takes on a life of its own, it's close to impossible to have any sort of nuanced discussion about it. Bill genuinely tried at that town hall, but the students were too enamored of their outrage to hear what he was saying. That whole setup was a pretty brilliant comment on cancel culture, IMO.

Was Ji-Yoon's ex Daniel Dae Kim? It sure looked like him in that picture on the fridge.

I forget which episode it was in, but I LOVED the scene in the dean's office where both Ji-Yoon and Bill said "to whom" not-so-under-their breath to correct the dean. Hee.

Edited August 21, 2021 by dubbel zout
spelling

[shapeshifter]

9 hours ago, Kirsty said:

And I take it Yaz is going to Yale

I hope so! I wish they had been a little more clear about that. 

 

9 hours ago, Kirsty said:

I could see that Bill wasn't a Nazi and I could also see that the students were right. Too bad he couldn't apologise to them in the first place.

But how? I think it was a no-apology-accepted situation, regardless of Bill being the antithesis of a Nazi

 

 

2 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

That whole setup was a pretty brilliant comment on cancel culture, IMO.

I was a little leery about the depiction of cancel culture until I realized that the Creator of the show was a woman (Amanda Peet).
That calls into question my own character and sense of judgement, but I'm not sure what the buzz word is for it.

 

 

15 hours ago, DB in CMH said:

I too felt like it wrapped up pretty well. 

So, who on the show has worked at a college or university? Because, as a junior faculty at small college in a humanities department, they absolutely fucking nailed it. Everything about it. Right down to the old professor not being able to work the copy machine, not bothering to look at student evaluations, young faculty needing to bite their tongues around older faculty (I have a colleague who still hauks around aTV cart with VHS!), and the Title IX officer being expected to do 8 other jobs, and none of them well. I could go on and on and on.

For the record, all of our offices look like Holland Taylor's. 

For me, it was six episodes of cringe comedy. While narratively I didn't think it was the best show in the world, I enjoyed the hell out of it.

I was a librarian at a small liberal arts college from ages 48-66 when I and others of my age without tenure were manipulated into retirement for budgetary reasons. 
So, both the campus and the situations felt real to me. Throughout, I put myself in Holland Taylor's character's role, and a younger former librarian colleague in Sandra Oh's character's role. I look forward to hearing what she thinks of it.

 

 

2 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

Was Ji-Yoon's ex Daniel Dae Kim? It sure looked like him in that picture on the fridge.

I know, right?! 

 

 

[SG429]

Did I miss something or did Bill return Fangirl's manuscript to his PhD student?

[dubbel zout]

38 minutes ago, SG429 said:

Did I miss something or did Bill return Fangirl's manuscript to his PhD student?

Bill returned his PhD student's manuscript to her. It was a misdirect when we saw him on the phone earlier to his publisher saying "she's the real thing." In one of the earlier episodes the Phd student complained to Ji-Yoon that Bill hadn't read her thesis.

[SG429]

35 minutes ago, dubbel zout said:

Bill returned his PhD student's manuscript to her. It was a misdirect when we saw him on the phone earlier to his publisher saying "she's the real thing." In one of the earlier episodes the Phd student complained to Ji-Yoon that Bill hadn't read her thesis.

I missed that. The Character Redemption Manuscript makes more sense.

[txhorns79]

13 hours ago, Kirsty said:

And no one's issues were dismissed. I could see that Bill wasn't a Nazi and I could also see that the students were right. Too bad he couldn't apologise to them in the first place.

I think they did a good job of showing that Bill should not be teaching at this time, but more because he seemed barely able to function, not because of anything the students were protesting. 

I really liked Holland Taylor in this, and Sandra Oh was great, as always.  I do wish there had been more episodes to give some of the secondary characters a little more development, and maybe not have this whole thing feel so rushed.   

[Corgi-ears]

17 hours ago, Kirsty said:

It was great fun and almost all of the characters got to show us more than one side. Like, that little scene with the old white male (Melville) professor going to bed with his wife really showed another dimension to the character.

Plus it was not at all clear that the Bob Balaban character, Rentz, was in any intentional, malicious way trying to sabotage Yaz's tenure case. He was right that Promotion and Tenure committees often distrust letters that only speak glowingly about a candidate; frequently they do indeed want to hear about the limitations of the candidate's work, which seems to be what Rentz was doing in writing about her research ("While she has published in top-tier journals...").

In fact, it wasn't really clear to me -- which is a compliment to the show -- that the way Yaz taught was faultless. She certainly had a good rapport with the students, and supported and uplifted the students of color in particular. But asking them to tweet their favourite lines? Ok, Yaz had a point that it's "just an activity," and maybe even a way to have students show that they did the reading. But Rentz wasn't out of line to point out that this encouraged them to treat the work as a series of soundbites. Likewise, when we do see Yaz in the classroom, she was...what? Getting students to drum and sing and perform? Which, again, was perhaps just a rousing engagement activity, and perhaps they had to do historical research into the period (though everything they did seemed pretty anachronistic). But was it clearly good, substantive literary teaching? Unclear.

(The snippets we got of the classroom teaching styles were actually quite illuminating. Ji-Yoon was positioned as being somewhere in the middle, passionately asking students to think about word choice in a poem. She wasn't just a staid, stand-at-the podium lecturer like Rentz, but also wasn't in the Yaz mode where, arguably, there was a bit more focus on style than substance in terms of classroom activities. It subtly explained why Ji-Yoon would have been elected as department chair, but also what Yaz feels that she was a bit too uncompromising and in the old-school told.)

23 hours ago, DB in CMH said:

[T]hey absolutely fucking nailed it. Everything about it. Right down to the old professor not being able to work the copy machine, not bothering to look at student evaluations, young faculty needing to bite their tongues around older faculty (I have a colleague who still hauks around aTV cart with VHS!), and the Title IX officer being expected to do 8 other jobs, and none of them well. I could go on and on and on.

The details specific to English Dept-ness were generally spot on too: the name of the top tier journal in which Yaz published (PMLA), the fact that the journal does gives an award for the best essay of the year, the fact that winning it would be a big deal. And, of course, the fact of Yale being fucking Yale.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Corgi-ears

[Kirsty]

16 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

But how? I think it was a no-apology-accepted situation, regardless of Bill being the antithesis of a Nazi

Oh no, the students asked Bill for an apology at the town hall and his response was:  "I am sorry if I made anyone feel--" ie. the non-apology apology.

He was supposed to apologise for giving the Nazi salute! He did not. Apologising for someone else's feelings is not an apology. And the "if" weakens it further. Like when a guy gropes someone and his apology is "I'm sorry if I made anyone feel uncomfortable". He's not sorry for the grope and he takes no responsibility for it, but if any overly sensitive people were upset about it, well, he's sorry about that now that he's in trouble.

It's entirely open to interpretation, but my impression was that the students would have accepted genuine remorse from Bill had he admitted his error of judgment at that stage. Unfortunately, Bill couldn't bring himself to admit to an error. He didn't apologise to them for giving the Nazi salute because he didn't actually believe that he had done anything wrong. He abhors Nazism, he mockingly gave the salute in the context of a lecture about the origins of absurdism, and he knows there was no intent on his part to propagate neo-Nazism. That's all that counts, to Bill's way of thinking.

The way I read it the request for an apology at the town hall was Bill's opportunity to put the issue to bed. But as soon as he launched into that "sorry if I made anyone feel" bullshit, the students correctly saw that he wasn't sorry for the salute, he wasn't even offering to apologise for giving it, and they rightly declined to accept some nonsense from him about upsetting their sensitive feelings.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Kirsty

[Jillybean]

17 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

Was Ji-Yoon's ex Daniel Dae Kim? It sure looked like him in that picture on the fridge.

I thought it was him, too.

[greekmom]

Binged all the episodes yesterday.

1. The kid is horrible! Ju-Ju is  such a brat. Other than that I love how she connected to Bill right away.  I wonder if she was very close to the guy that Ji-Yoon was dating and just wants a constant parent figure as her mother isn't balancing her work/life very well.  I honestly thought that Ju-Ju was part Asian and didn't realize she was adopted until they said it. Then I thought that Ji-Yoon adopted a child that had partial Asian heritage.  Damn, those bitties at the birthday party were super cruel.

2. The whole thing with Bill and the Nazi thing could have been settled with Bill admitting that he was drunk and on drugs due to the loss of his wife and will apologize, go on a sabbatical and treatment. No one not even his lawyer went that route. 

3. Damn, Ji-Yoon inherited a whole shit load of a mess. I hope Joan gets the same crap next season.  Honestly it would not be fair if she didn't. Then she can see why Ji-Yoon was drowning. 

4. The senile professor should have automatically been retired out. The guy didn't know what the heck his name was and if he was coming or going. Plus he was a sexist ass when his faculties were there (smacking Joan on the bottom).

5. Department IX. I agree with Joan that what the girl was wearing were inappropriate for any workplace. Yes, people do have a right to wear what they want but no, not in all situations and certainly the University would want to maintain a sense of decorum in the workplace. I can wear black pants at work and a t-shirt (plain), but I certainly cannot wear sweatpants and a t-shirt with logos.  Other than that, I found the girl working there totally out of her depth and unhelpful.  Her replies were all "Did you discuss this with your chair."  Basically she is being paid for a job that does nothing.

6. Did it seem that Bill and Ji-Yoon had a history? I wonder if Bill cheated on his wife at some point with her.

7. Damn that head of the University.  If he thinks pandering to cancel culture is doing these kids a favour, wait till they get out in the real world. Those students are in a world of a wake up call. I understand doing damage control, then there is catering.  He was catering. But Bill's attitude didn't help either.

8. Meville and Joan come from "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" generation.  I get it. They are coasting on notes that they wrote 40 years ago. But if they want to stay valid they can't coast and should just retire. But the comments made by the student on ratemyprofeesor were just cruel. 

 

 

[cambridgeguy]

16 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

I hope so! I wish they had been a little more clear about that. 

If there's a second season they left it open ended enough to go either way.  The problems she had at Pembroke would also be present at Yale, and she could likely negotiate a comparable retention package, especially with the English department trying to rebuild its reputation.  

8 hours ago, Corgi-ears said:

Plus it was not at all clear that the Bob Balaban character, Rentz, was in any intentional, malicious way trying to sabotage Yaz's tenure case. He was right that Promotion and Tenure committees often distrust letters that only speak glowingly about a candidate; frequently they do indeed want to hear about the limitations of the candidate's work, which seems to be what Rentz was doing in writing about her research ("While she has published in top-tier journals...").

Assuming that your colleagues don't hate you, it's the external reviewers and publishing record that really matter, not how awesome your teaching evaluations are.  That's the big thing at schools like Yale and Harvard (google Lorgia Garcia Pena).  I can easily see committee members thinking that Yaz spent way too much time and energy on her class instead of research and publications. 

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, Kirsty said:

Oh no, the students asked Bill for an apology at the town hall and his response was:  "I am sorry if I made anyone feel--" ie. the non-apology apology.

He was supposed to apologise for giving the Nazi salute! He did not. Apologising for someone else's feelings is not an apology. And the "if" weakens it further. Like when a guy gropes someone and his apology is "I'm sorry if I made anyone feel uncomfortable". He's not sorry for the grope and he takes no responsibility for it, but if any overly sensitive people were upset about it, well, he's sorry about that now that he's in trouble.

It's entirely open to interpretation, but my impression was that the students would have accepted genuine remorse from Bill had he admitted his error of judgment at that stage. Unfortunately, Bill couldn't bring himself to admit to an error. He didn't apologise to them for giving the Nazi salute because he didn't actually believe that he had done anything wrong. He abhors Nazism, he mockingly gave the salute in the context of a lecture about the origins of absurdism, and he knows there was no intent on his part to propagate neo-Nazism. That's all that counts, to Bill's way of thinking.

The way I read it the request for an apology at the town hall was Bill's opportunity to put the issue to bed. But as soon as he launched into that "sorry if I made anyone feel" bullshit, the students correctly saw that he wasn't sorry for the salute, he wasn't even offering to apologise for giving it, and they rightly declined to accept some nonsense from him about upsetting their sensitive feelings.

Thanks for putting down in words the issues with Bill's non-apology (which I was too lazy to do). 
However, I still don't think even with a genuine apology of "remorse" that Bill was going to be able to turn around the wrath of the students and have a different professional outcome. As much as outcries against "cancel culture" personally irk me, I bought the depiction here of a runaway sentiment within a group. 

Time is more likely to be Bill's path to teaching again; time might give Bill room to figure out a way to condemn his past poor judgement in a way that is palatable to both himself and others.

Plus, Bill is obviously not one of those people who heal their grief by throwing themselves into their work. As someone else mentioned upthread, he needs time off.

But having him turn down the settlement cash of million$? Such a Hollywood ending!

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by shapeshifter

[gesundheit]

3 hours ago, Kirsty said:

Oh no, the students asked Bill for an apology at the town hall and his response was:  "I am sorry if I made anyone feel--" ie. the non-apology apology.

He was supposed to apologise for giving the Nazi salute! He did not. Apologising for someone else's feelings is not an apology. And the "if" weakens it further. Like when a guy gropes someone and his apology is "I'm sorry if I made anyone feel uncomfortable". He's not sorry for the grope and he takes no responsibility for it, but if any overly sensitive people were upset about it, well, he's sorry about that now that he's in trouble.

It's entirely open to interpretation, but my impression was that the students would have accepted genuine remorse from Bill had he admitted his error of judgment at that stage. Unfortunately, Bill couldn't bring himself to admit to an error. He didn't apologise to them for giving the Nazi salute because he didn't actually believe that he had done anything wrong. He abhors Nazism, he mockingly gave the salute in the context of a lecture about the origins of absurdism, and he knows there was no intent on his part to propagate neo-Nazism. That's all that counts, to Bill's way of thinking.

The way I read it the request for an apology at the town hall was Bill's opportunity to put the issue to bed. But as soon as he launched into that "sorry if I made anyone feel" bullshit, the students correctly saw that he wasn't sorry for the salute, he wasn't even offering to apologise for giving it, and they rightly declined to accept some nonsense from him about upsetting their sensitive feelings.

Yes, I think that was the larger issue. That he was too entitled to think he was obligated to answer for anything. He saw it as an opportunity for a conversation -- but a conversation led by him, without having to provide both context and an apology. "Here is what I meant by it, and here is why it was still a mistake." It may or may not have calmed the outrage, but he thought the discourse was beneath him. 

1 hour ago, cambridgeguy said:

If there's a second season they left it open ended enough to go either way.  The problems she had at Pembroke would also be present at Yale, and she could likely negotiate a comparable retention package, especially with the English department trying to rebuild its reputation.  

Assuming that your colleagues don't hate you, it's the external reviewers and publishing record that really matter, not how awesome your teaching evaluations are.  That's the big thing at schools like Yale and Harvard (google Lorgia Garcia Pena).  I can easily see committee members thinking that Yaz spent way too much time and energy on her class instead of research and publications. 

Yes, I have to say since it's a big problem in academia (a focus on research/publishing and virtually zero attention to teaching -- that's for the adjuncts to worry about!) I was startled by anyone making a big deal out of student evals -- at first I thought it was underscoring that they were a different type of department, more pedagogy-focused. But I think it was just artistic license for a fun subplot rather than telling us they were an anomaly.

[dubbel zout]

10 hours ago, Corgi-ears said:

Plus it was not at all clear that the Bob Balaban character, Rentz, was in any intentional, malicious way trying to sabotage Yaz's tenure case.

I thought it was clear he didn't approve of her teaching methods and approach to the material and was only grudgingly supporting her tenure bid. He was smart enough to realize he couldn't be outright dismissive of her qualifications.

Why the old farting professor was still in the department was the biggest mystery to me. Give him an emeritus title and send him out to pasture. That should have been a no-brainer for Ji-Yoon. That guy spends more time sleeping than anything else. At least Rentz is still doing research, no matter how dated it may be.

[funnygirl]

The students were so annoying. 

Ji-Yoon and Joan were the best part of the series for me. 

[cambridgeguy]

2 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

I thought it was clear he didn't approve of her teaching methods and approach to the material and was only grudgingly supporting her tenure bid. He was smart enough to realize he couldn't be outright dismissive of her qualifications.

That's not intentionally malicious - he probably honestly thought she was turning class into a big party where everyone would have fun and get an easy A (hence great student evaluations) but learn nothing of consequence.  They never established how the class and department measured student success beyond enrollment numbers and (presumably) good grades, but that's the strongest counterpoint Yaz could have come up with.

[shapeshifter]

50 minutes ago, cambridgeguy said:

[Rentz] probably honestly thought she was turning class into a big party where everyone would have fun and get an easy A (hence great student evaluations) but learn nothing of consequence.  They never established how the class and department measured student success beyond enrollment numbers and (presumably) good grades, but that's the strongest counterpoint Yaz could have come up with.

There was a line I can't find right now --maybe one of you will recall?
I think it's during their first shared dialogue:
Yaz explains to Rentz she's having the students tweet their favorite quote from Moby Dick, to which Rentz responds dismissively that he wants them to encounter the text as a whole, to which Yaz replies (and this is the line I wish I could quote) that the act of selecting their tweet texts leads them to closer reading.

It's an important pedagogical point that probably gets lost to the viewers.
The rapping makes for better TV --and I thought it too illustrated that they had internalized the text in a lasting way-- but that point was probably also obscured amid the theatrics and boisterous enthusiasm of the students.

I suppose, though, that the significance of the tweets and the raps being lost to the viewer is one of the meta points of the show. 

[Corgi-ears]

9 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

Why the old farting professor was still in the department was the biggest mystery to me. Give him an emeritus title and send him out to pasture. That should have been a no-brainer for Ji-Yoon.

Emeritus professors usually still draw salaries, albeit reduced (and retain their offices -- poor Joan!). The university was trying to get (Ji-Yoon to get) them to take voluntary retirement, which is different, and a greater cost-saving.

 

9 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

I thought it was clear he didn't approve of her teaching methods and approach to the material and was only grudgingly supporting her tenure bid.

I thought it was a lot more ambiguous. During one of their co-taught classes -- and the fact that Rentz was present for it already suggests that his motivations aren't so black-and-white, since many senior professors will not even deign to attend the classes that their colleagues co-teach -- the camera lingered on Rentz's face as he watched Yaz's leading the students in their drumming/singing activity. It didn't to me look like he was, say, straighttfowwardly sneery. Any sneery-ness was mixed with grudging admiration, perhaps some befuddled incomprehension, and maybe a soupçon of anxiety that comes from feeling threatened.

 

11 hours ago, cambridgeguy said:

Assuming that your colleagues don't hate you, it's the external reviewers and publishing record that really matter, not how awesome your teaching evaluations are.

9 hours ago, gesundheit said:

I was startled by anyone making a big deal out of student evals -- at first I thought it was underscoring that they were a different type of department, more pedagogy-focused. But I think it was just artistic license for a fun subplot rather than telling us they were an anomaly.

I think there are two different (though interrelated) issues we were being shown. I think the student evals weren't so much being considered for (Yaz's and others') tenure cases, which does often neglect assessments of teaching in favor of assessments of research. But the evals, along with the even blunter instrument that is student enrolment numbers, were being taken to indicate which classes and teachers can draw students to major in English, and thus secure the department more funding.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Corgi-ears

[zenithwit]

What a short season with only six episodes.  This limited number of episodes really seemed to do this show a disservice.  As others have commented, all of the storylines were surface-level and we really didn't get any depth to most of the characters.

On 8/21/2021 at 12:15 PM, dubbel zout said:

Bill should not have given the Nazi salute, but I understood what he meant by it. I think the show deliberately made the students have a knee-jerk reaction to show how context is so important for these kinds of things.

One thing that I felt was a bit of a plot hole was why didn't the full clip of Bill from his lecture with the Nazi salute ever come out?  There were several students filming him and I can't imagine they would be coordinated enough to only agree to release the same 2 second clip.  Of course doing the Nazi salute was dumb but I could see a slightly more sympathic student release a longer clip to show that there was some sort of non-white supremacist context.  

On 8/21/2021 at 3:55 PM, dubbel zout said:

Bill returned his PhD student's manuscript to her. It was a misdirect when we saw him on the phone earlier to his publisher saying "she's the real thing." In one of the earlier episodes the Phd student complained to Ji-Yoon that Bill hadn't read her thesis

Could it also be a redirect from when the younger student (who gave him the pie) went to his house and asked about his publisher and if he could read her manuscript?

Edited August 23, 2021 by zenithwit

[DB in CMH]

8 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

There was a line I can't find right now --maybe one of you will recall?
I think it's during their first shared dialogue:
Yaz explains to Rentz she's having the students tweet their favorite quote from Moby Dick, to which Rentz responds dismissively that he wants them to encounter the text as a whole, to which Yaz replies (and this is the line I wish I could quote) that the act of selecting their tweet texts leads them to closer reading.

It's an important pedagogical point that probably gets lost to the viewers.
The rapping makes for better TV --and I thought it too illustrated that they had internalized the text in a lasting way-- but that point was probably also obscured amid the theatrics and boisterous enthusiasm of the students.

I suppose, though, that the significance of the tweets and the raps being lost to the viewer is one of the meta points of the show. 

This is getting off topic, but I see both points of view. As a lit professor, I want students to appreciate texts the way I do (the Rentz method) but I also don't want to look out and see half the class sleeping, hence I incorporate some of what Yaz does. Not to that extent, of course - that was very much heightened for television. Learning comes in many different forms. There's a weird strain among many professors who approach students as if they are future scholars in the field. They aren't, and it's important to keep that in mind.

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by DB in CMH

[shapeshifter]

7 hours ago, zenithwit said:

One thing that I felt was a bit of a plot hole was why didn't the full clip of Bill from his lecture with the Nazi salute ever come out?  There were several students filming him and I can't imagine they would be coordinated enough to only agree to release the same 2 second clip.  Of course doing the Nazi salute was dumb but I could see a slightly more sympathic student release a longer clip to show that there was some sort of non-white supremacist context.  

Bill's Nazi picture was a grainy black and white still, wasn't it? Sorry, I don't recall.
But if it was a single photo, perhaps it was taken over a decade ago with a disposable camera, and then later someone used a phone to take a picture of the print and upload it.
Regardless, I didn't question that no full video clip surfaced of Bill's Nazi officer reenactment
--perhaps because I was recently very grateful and relieved to find a 5 second clip of Mom's voice, a year after she passed.

[dubbel zout]

12 hours ago, Corgi-ears said:

Emeritus professors usually still draw salaries, albeit reduced (and retain their offices -- poor Joan!). The university was trying to get (Ji-Yoon to get) them to take voluntary retirement, which is different, and a greater cost-saving.

Not in academia, so I don't know the conventions. I was thinking emeritus status was a face-saving way to ease out the olds.

9 hours ago, zenithwit said:

Could it also be a redirect from when the younger student (who gave him the pie) went to his house and asked about his publisher and if he could read her manuscript?

That's what I meant by misdirect. The seed for the PhD student's thesis had been planted much earlier than the student's ms.

[marybennet]

42 minutes ago, dubbel zout said:

12 hours ago, Corgi-ears said:

Emeritus professors usually still draw salaries, albeit reduced (and retain their offices -- poor Joan!). The university was trying to get (Ji-Yoon to get) them to take voluntary retirement, which is different, and a greater cost-saving.

Not in academia, so I don't know the conventions. I was thinking emeritus status was a face-saving way to ease out the olds.

Neither of those.  Emeritus status is awarded to retiring faculty who have been generally meritorious in their careers (in research, teaching, and service) to give them a title they can still use that attaches them to the school they are retiring from and access to facilities (the library, sometimes-but-not-always their offices, a less-good parking space).  No pay.

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, dubbel zout said:

That's what I meant by misdirect. The seed for the PhD student's thesis had been planted much earlier than the student's ms.

Yes, I think we were supposed to be pleasantly surprised that instead of Bill using his connections with well-known publishing house editors to further the fan girl student's manuscript, it turned out to be Lila's thesis (Bill was Lila's faculty advisor; Lila was Ji-Yoon's assistant).
But it wasn't as clear (IMO) as it could have been. 

I think it would have worked better if both manuscripts had memorable (to the viewer) titles, perhaps with some double entendre meanings, that the camera focused on long enough for the viewers to read and recall later. The names of the 2 students being memorable and appearing on the covers of the manuscripts would have helped too.
But it probably would have taken up too much screen time. 
They probably should have just cut the fan girl manuscript misdirect bit altogether, if they couldn't do it right.

 

[ahpny]

Is "Pembroke" supposed to be a fictional "ivy-like" school, or the real Brown University? See https://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/Databases/Encyclopedia/search.php?serial=P0090

There was at least one reference to "Pembroke" as a "lesser-Ivy" school, but I don't think "Brown" was mentioned once during the entire series, though the setting tracked with Providence, RI as far as I could tell. Yale (numerous times) and Columbia (at least once) got prominent mentions.

[dubbel zout]

2 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

They probably should have just cut the fan girl manuscript misdirect bit altogether, if they couldn't do it right.

I enjoyed that, because of course she was writing a novel. It reminds me of a time I was on jury duty, and during voir dire it seemed like everyone was trying to write a novel. Fifteen years later everyone had a screenplay. *snerk*

[Alexander Pope]

On 8/21/2021 at 10:51 PM, Corgi-ears said:

Plus it was not at all clear that the Bob Balaban character, Rentz, was in any intentional, malicious way trying to sabotage Yaz's tenure case. He was right that Promotion and Tenure committees often distrust letters that only speak glowingly about a candidate; frequently they do indeed want to hear about the limitations of the candidate's work, which seems to be what Rentz was doing in writing about her research ("While she has published in top-tier journals...").

In fact, it wasn't really clear to me -- which is a compliment to the show -- that the way Yaz taught was faultless. She certainly had a good rapport with the students, and supported and uplifted the students of color in particular. But asking them to tweet their favourite lines? Ok, Yaz had a point that it's "just an activity," and maybe even a way to have students show that they did the reading. But Rentz wasn't out of line to point out that this encouraged them to treat the work as a series of soundbites. Likewise, when we do see Yaz in the classroom, she was...what? Getting students to drum and sing and perform? Which, again, was perhaps just a rousing engagement activity, and perhaps they had to do historical research into the period (though everything they did seemed pretty anachronistic). But was it clearly good, substantive literary teaching? Unclear.

(The snippets we got of the classroom teaching styles were actually quite illuminating. Ji-Yoon was positioned as being somewhere in the middle, passionately asking students to think about word choice in a poem. She wasn't just a staid, stand-at-the podium lecturer like Rentz, but also wasn't in the Yaz mode where, arguably, there was a bit more focus on style than substance in terms of classroom activities. It subtly explained why Ji-Yoon would have been elected as department chair, but also what Yaz feels that she was a bit too uncompromising and in the old-school told.)

The details specific to English Dept-ness were generally spot on too: the name of the top tier journal in which Yaz published (PMLA), the fact that the journal does gives an award for the best essay of the year, the fact that winning it would be a big deal. And, of course, the fact of Yale being fucking Yale.

As an English professor who has taught at several institutions and been in the profession for decades, I enthusiastically agree with this.  It is also worth pointing out that Ji Yoon was teaching a seminar on Dickinson's poetry (which demands close reading), which is very different from a big lecture class on fiction.  I thought the contrast between Yaz and Bob Balaban was way too overdone.  Especially because IRL (in my experience) there are plenty of old white guys who lecture who get great evaluations, while young women of color often struggle to get good scores no matter how hard they try (it is a well-documented fact that student bias systematically affects their evaluations).  This was just too over-simplified.

But yes, that scene where she defends the tweeting exercise as encouraging close reading (hard to do with a big novel) was great and one of several moments where the show was trying to give us a sense of the two of them trying to connect.  I also agree that thanks to Bob Balaban's great performance, you could see how conflicted and impressed he was when he was watching the students perform in their co-taught class.  I think it is implied that Yaz went to Yale but it's not clear to me that she wouldn't have gotten tenure at Pembroke.

I should also add that in my department, teaching evaluations are taken VERY seriously--albeit with full awareness that students can be biased--and we are part of a big research institution.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Alexander Pope
edited for nuance

[circumvent]

On 8/21/2021 at 3:15 PM, dubbel zout said:

Bill should not have given the Nazi salute, but I understood what he meant by it. I think the show deliberately made the students have a knee-jerk reaction to show how context is so important for these kinds of things. And once it takes on a life of its own, it's close to impossible to have any sort of nuanced discussion about it. Bill genuinely tried at that town hall, but the students were too enamored of their outrage to hear what he was saying.

i watched this whole thing in a day and I am not sure what to make of it. I agree with this comment. It was clear that he wasn't channeling Nazis, and the students reaction was way over the top, immature and annoying. It was all groupthink, no critical thinking. 

I wish they had explored the student/assistant more. She was the one who seemed to have seen the whole thing for what it was, and the only student I could get myself to care about. The others, I felt like kicking their asses.

The show felt rushed, a lot of stories that we still don't know much about. 

 

[seth]

Very 'meh' show. Nothing original or memorable here. It's very difficult to get engaged about a stuffy university's dinosaur-ness problems and failing English dept. when every scene & event seems as old & tired as the decaying professors.

Sandra Oh (looking puffy) is a competent & believable actor, and Holland Taylor chews up the scenery ferociously, but the whole thing around Dobson's Nazi salute feels like a tempest-in-a-teapot dredged up to make it seem like the show is going to engage in modern-day relevance. And David Morse, one of my favorite,  super-solid actors, is totally wasted here.

Was ready to quit it after 3 episodes, pushed through a little further but...just can't get engaged, sorry.

[shapeshifter]

33 minutes ago, seth said:

Very 'meh' show. Nothing original or memorable here. It's very difficult to get engaged about a stuffy university's dinosaur-ness problems and failing English dept. when every scene & event seems as old & tired as the decaying professors.

Sandra Oh (looking puffy) is a competent & believable actor, and Holland Taylor chews up the scenery ferociously, but the whole thing around Dobson's Nazi salute feels like a tempest-in-a-teapot dredged up to make it seem like the show is going to engage in modern-day relevance. And David Morse, one of my favorite,  super-solid actors, is totally wasted here.

Was ready to quit it after 3 episodes, pushed through a little further but...just can't get engaged, sorry.

Maybe you had to have been there?

I mean:   
The show is almost the opposite of shows which are unwatchable by those who are professionals in the field depicted. 
For example, my daughter who is a 9-1-1 operator can’t stand to watch 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star because they’re so unrealistic. And health care professionals can’t stand to watch doctor shows. Legal professionals and those who work in law enforcement can’t stand Law & Order franchise.

In contrast, myself and others posting here and elsewhere about The Chair, who have worked in academia are finding it to be very accurate, even if a bit exaggerated.

Or maybe you too worked in academia and have had enough?

[Anela]

On 8/23/2021 at 8:20 AM, shapeshifter said:

Bill's Nazi picture was a grainy black and white still, wasn't it? Sorry, I don't recall.
But if it was a single photo, perhaps it was taken over a decade ago with a disposable camera, and then later someone used a phone to take a picture of the print and upload it.
Regardless, I didn't question that no full video clip surfaced of Bill's Nazi officer reenactment
--perhaps because I was recently very grateful and relieved to find a 5 second clip of Mom's voice, a year after she passed.

I was surprised the full video wasn't shown, but kids will be kids. That one thing would make it to something like TikTok, and go viral. 

I liked this, but didn't think it was the best thing that Netflix has put out in years, like one reviewer claimed (in an article somewhere). I watched for Sandra Oh, and stayed for Joan, as well. I loved her, and I loved that she got more students interested in her class, after she stood up to the one guy who kept insulting her. I don't work in academia, so it wasn't written for me.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Anela

[possibilities]

I think the scene with the student coming to Bill's house with her novel needed to be there, because it showed that even after all that had happened, he was still not functionally dealing with any of it. He answered the door without pants on. He assumed she was there to fuck him and even said so! The complete arrogance + dysfunctionality of it was tremendous. He just didn't have his shit together on any level, and even when he seemed to kind of vaguely get it and be paying lip service to taking it seriously, he was still totally stuck in bad patterns.

It's like he got it that he was in trouble, but he didn't have any idea what to do about it, and wasn't really trying. He'd probably mediocred his entire way through life like that, getting away with it up until now.

I think that showing the students happily taking Ji-yoon's Dickinson class shows they were willing to forgive and get over it if someone demonstrated sufficient accountability. I thought that was a really important scene, because it showed the students were not just holding grudges because they were rage addicts. I thought they asked Bill really good questions at his "town hall" and he showed them that he really still didn't understand or respect them, which is not how you take accountability or show remorse or earn forgiveness. His intentions had nothing to do with his utter lack of common sense and ability to behave responsibly an care about other people. And since he's supposed to be an adult, and a teacher moreover, that was important and relevant to his role.

I also thought it was fantastic when Ji-yoon called him out on not returning her calls, not taking her advice, not taking her seriously, and then trying to guilt her. She struggled in the admin role and I was really impatient with it, but by the last two episodes she was starting to get better at it. She got that donation and the lecture back from Duchovny, and she was maneuvering the things that had spun out of control, but the rest of the faculty lost patience, and she STILL didn't communicate well about what she was doing. She was trying to handle it all herself, and it just didn't work. The olds didn't know she was fighting for their jobs. No one knew what she was doing. And that's also on her. In a way, I thought it was great that they showed she was actually happier teaching, and didn't really miss the admin job. It's a superwoman thing that Ji-yoon was trying to do, and really that she was being asked to do, and she decided she could just be a person, and not take all the shit doled out to women who "take the bomb so they'll be holding it when it explodes".

I also liked that she stayed firm with Bill and didn't let him drown his sorrows in her pants.

Also loved it when Yaz told Old Guy that he wasn't a teacher because he had no students. It's one thing to not pander. It's another to not give a shit if anyone can hear you. I thought his attitude showed that he really only cared about fluffing his own ego. If he wrote a book that no publisher would publish, he might say he doesn't care and they're wrong not to see its value. But he'd also have to accept that he wasn't getting published. He was basically being defensive about his lack of popularity, because he didn't think his job was actually in danger. It wasn't really a morally superior pont of view, it was smug.

 

[twoods]

I liked the show, but wish it was longer so the characters can get fleshed out. I did hate the annoying students (but super happy the TA may get her work published), and the sociopathic daughter was not fun to watch. It seems like she’s in therapy but she’s one of those kids that will light her house on fire when she’s a teenager. I could do with less of her if there’s a second season. 

[DearEvette]

On 8/24/2021 at 7:16 PM, shapeshifter said:

Maybe you had to have been there?

I mean:   
The show is almost the opposite of shows which are unwatchable by those who are professionals in the field depicted. 
For example, my daughter who is a 9-1-1 operator can’t stand to watch 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star because they’re so unrealistic. And health care professionals can’t stand to watch doctor shows. Legal professionals and those who work in law enforcement can’t stand Law & Order franchise.

In contrast, myself and others posting here and elsewhere about The Chair, who have worked in academia are finding it to be very accurate, even if a bit exaggerated.

Or maybe you too worked in academia and have had enough?

I found the show to be incredibly accurate  To the point where I am a bit triggered. LOL.

But.... I have to say from a narrative/storyteliing aspect I can't say I really enjoyed it.   And I think part of it is because of the exaggerated areas are so very exaggerated to make a point for the story alone.  For instance I know that many academic depts. especially those in the Humanities and Sciences have older faculty who have been there forever, but a school of that size, the English dept would have a lot of different demographics and not just the two youngish WOC, the one problematic white guy, and all the oldsters.  There would have been other profs, some NTENs, definitely a few more white women. 

So it felt like the show decided to draw some very stark lines.  And where on the one hand it does win on accuracy, on the other it fails in nuance.  We got one archetype for each issue it wanted to play with.

I was also pretty  disappointed that Yaz got no interiority. Her issues are facts.  100%.  But I felt we saw Yaz's story from an outsider sympathetic gaze and not from how the person inside the issue would see it.  Maybe they felt that wouldn't be funny?  I dunno.  But it also impacted my reception of the show.

And finally, I know it is also pretty realistic, but I was also very disappointed that the show chose to make Bill's issues and story such a main plot propeller.  We've seen Bill on 1,000 other shows.  We haven't seen Ji-Yoon.

[shapeshifter]

3 hours ago, DearEvette said:

a school of that size, the English dept would have a lot of different demographics and not just the two youngish WOC, the one problematic white guy, and all the oldsters.  There would have been other profs, some NTENs, definitely a few more white women. 

I wonder if there would have been more bit parts filling out the faculty if it had not been shot during the pandemic?

 

3 hours ago, DearEvette said:

I was also pretty  disappointed that Yaz got no interiority. Her issues are facts.  100%.  But I felt we saw Yaz's story from an outsider sympathetic gaze and not from how the person inside the issue would see it.  Maybe they felt that wouldn't be funny?  I dunno.  But it also impacted my reception of the show.

As a white but not WASP woman, I thought it might have been a conscious choice to not show the interiority of Yaz's life, since that's how she would likely be seen by her colleagues (unfortunately). 
Maybe if they do another season we will get to know her better (since they left the story open for her not going to Yale, although, IRL, I would hope Yaz would go to Yale and have a fabulous career). 
On the media thread, I posted a quote from an interview with the actor who played Yaz:

Quote

...Nana Mensah, who plays...Yaz...[a]t first...was leery of Peet’s ability to accurately depict a Black woman’s struggles within a predominantly white world. But after reading the scripts, she found their accuracy “staggering,” the issues “very smartly handled.”
...“I think what Amanda and the team got so right was that feeling of walking into a room and being outnumbered,” Mensah said. “The language around all of that can be very subtle. Nobody’s burning crosses in anybody’s front yard anymore.”

 

[JAYJAY1979]

Joan (Holland Taylor) was the best part of the show.  She wasn't perfect, but she had the most sense of all the characters.

Yaz and Rentz sadly were judging one another without learning from one another.  Rentz too cocky and dismissive of new ideas, while Yaz had a her way or the highway approach (and she had a surface over depth approach). I think a balance between their styles would work best.  Teaching the works, but use modern day examples.

Bill should have been made to do a 1 year sabbatical due to his grief. 

Ji-yoon was in over her head as chair, but given the cast of players..anyone would have been.

[dubbel zout]

I always thought department chairs rotated through the department so that no one could have too much influence (or do too much damage, lol). Or does it depend on the college?

[DearEvette]

1 hour ago, dubbel zout said:

I always thought department chairs rotated through the department so that no one could have too much influence (or do too much damage, lol). Or does it depend on the college?

I think it depends on the college.  At one place I worked, they had a strict two-year term.  But where I work now, there is no limit.  You can be chair for as long as you want.  There is one department (thankfully) where one chair is  awesome and competent and he's been chair forever  Probably why he has survived  with such goodwill.  And his department is very healthy with enrollment and demand.  Meanwhile there is one department where it feels like they are playing musical chairs. I think some people want it and don't realize all the administrative minutia that comes along with it that flexes a completely different skill set than research and pedagogy.  This show only touched the tip of the iceberg of what Ji-Yoon had to deal with.

[ladle]

On 8/22/2021 at 11:51 AM, gesundheit said:

I was startled by anyone making a big deal out of student evals -- at first I thought it was underscoring that they were a different type of department, more pedagogy-focused. But I think it was just artistic license for a fun subplot rather than telling us they were an anomaly.

I see what you're saying, as I'm a professor now but I was never trained to teach at all.  That was almost an afterthought.  I will say, though, that I think the emphasis on the evals was related to the low enrollments in those professors' courses -- which is something that administrators care about now (even at R1s) with the steady shift toward a more "consumer"-oriented model of higher ed.  

This show took a couple of episodes to grow on me, but eventually it did!  I do think it really nailed a lot of dimensions of academia (so much so that I'm confused as to why it keeps getting called a "farce" in the media.  To me, it was straight-up realism!).  Some of the lines were spooky-accurate.  I don't think it was a perfect show, by any means -- they did get some things about academia wrong, I wasn't sure what the tone was supposed to be a lot of the time, and I was slightly irritated that Ji-Yoon was derailed by the antics of a white male (whom she then sort of ... ended up with?!).  But I'd watch a second season, for sure.  

[shapeshifter]

8 hours ago, ladle said:

I was slightly irritated that Ji-Yoon was derailed by the antics of a white male (whom she then sort of ... ended up with?!)

Having Ji-Yoon "derailed by the antics of a white male" was almost a little too on the nose, so maybe they thought making him her almost-love interest would shake up the trope* a bit?

__________________________

* "trope" is not exactly the right word here, because it's a reality, but I am not an English major

Edited August 27, 2021 by shapeshifter

[DearEvette]

13 hours ago, ladle said:

I wasn't sure what the tone was supposed to be a lot of the time,

This right here.  This is probably why I have such a hard time really falling into the show.  It wasn't funny enough to really be a comedy, not biting enough to really be a satire, not silly enough to really be a farce but not serious enough to be a drama.  It bounces around all of them without actually hitting or combining just right on any of them.  The strength is on the stuff it gets really right and of the actors. 

 

13 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Having Ji-Yoon "derailed by the antics of a white male" was almost a little too on the nose, so maybe they thought making him her almost-love interest would shake up the trope* a bit?

Honestly, Ji-Yoon ending up with Bill was the least surprising thing in the show to me.  I knew he'd become a LI as soon as they introduced him and I saw who was playing him.  I think it would strongly preferred it if Daniel Dae Kim had actually been on the show as her husband or partner and as faculty from some other dept.

[ladle]

On 8/26/2021 at 10:05 PM, shapeshifter said:

Having Ji-Yoon "derailed by the antics of a white male" was almost a little too on the nose, so maybe they thought making him her almost-love interest would shake up the trope* a bit?

__________________________

* "trope" is not exactly the right word here, because it's a reality, but I am not an English major

Oh it was totally on the nose! But I thought the love interest part just made it worse. (To clarify, I wasn’t listing that as an unrealistic aspect of the show - just an aspect I found unsatisfying.)

[stealinghome]

I finished the show this evening and thought it was okay but not great, and I don't understand why so many professional reviewers/critics are absolutely drooling over it. As others have said, the tone is a serious problem. It was marketed as academic satire/parody, but it's really a dramedy that is heavier on the drama than comedy--which is a problem because The Chair is least successful when it's being a drama. Its best moments are when it leans into the absurd comedy and the academic satire/parody, but there aren't enough of those (sustained) moments to really carry the show. If it comes back for a Season 2, it really needs to get hold of what exactly it wants to be.

And man, for a show that ostensibly wants to criticize tropes and show different perspectives, it is chock full of tropes. Also when the show is least successful? Any time Bill is on screen. He's basically a walking trope and is incredibly, incredibly insufferable. He's not interesting, charming, or sympathetic, he's the millstone around the show's neck that drags it down. I don't think the issue with the show was a lack of time per se, it's that it devoted so much time to the black hole that is Bill. And maybe it's a larger meta point that the narrative engine of the show is Ji-Yoon cleaning up Bill's mess, but really...again for a show that wants to be critical...was it really a wise choice to make the narrative driver of the show the white guy's storyline and have Ji-Yoon basically just be totally reactive to it all season? That said, I did love when she got to dress Bill down not just for the on-campus mess, but for his larger life issues. I was cheering all through that speech, because my goodness someone needed to give it.

On a different note, am I the only one who found Joan becoming chair really unsatisfying? I know they played it as a big moment of triumph for her, like she's finally getting her due...except it continues the well-documented problem of women taking on a disproportionate amount of departmental service relative to men. Not that I wanted the Melville professor to be chair, mind, but it just seemed odd to "reward" Joan--who had a lovely, lovely moment when she breaks down and talks about never going up for full because she shelved her research and did all the service (best moment of this episode)--with what has been characterized as the worst service position of all.

On 8/27/2021 at 11:51 AM, DearEvette said:

This right here.  This is probably why I have such a hard time really falling into the show.  It wasn't funny enough to really be a comedy, not biting enough to really be a satire, not silly enough to really be a farce but not serious enough to be a drama.  It bounces around all of them without actually hitting or combining just right on any of them.  The strength is on the stuff it gets really right and of the actors.

ITA.

On 8/25/2021 at 9:32 PM, possibilities said:

Also loved it when Yaz told Old Guy that he wasn't a teacher because he had no students. It's one thing to not pander. It's another to not give a shit if anyone can hear you.

Agreed--that was a GREAT line, and the perfect way to take smug Melville prof down. A professor's job is to engage the students and get them engaged with the course material. Smug Melville professor didn't give a shit about any of that, he wanted to just roll in and give the same lectures he's given for 40 years and enjoy the sound of his own voice. He's not (no longer) a true teacher. (I mean really, if you can only draw 4-5 students a semester for what should be a roast beef survey of American Lit, you have a serious problem with your course.)

Overall, I'd probably watch a Season 2, but I can't lie, I had high hopes for this show and it was disappointing. I hope a potential Season 2 would be better.

Oh, and re: what happens to Yaz--I thought the implication was that she chose to stay at Pembroke. The old Melville professor handing out the syllabi in the background (reversing their positions from earlier in the season) in the closing montage I thought was supposed to indicate that she's sticking around, since it implies she's finally getting her due and is secure.

Truest quote of the episode: "When you're untenured you read the bylaws." SO TRUE.

Edited August 30, 2021 by stealinghome

[possibilities]

Everyone seems to read Joan's becoming Chair as a triumph, but I thought it was just a full circle moment. She looked exactly how satisfied as Ji-yoon looked on her first day as Chair. I don't think it implies she stays triumphant or that we should consider this to be about her getting her due.

[shapeshifter]

4 hours ago, possibilities said:

Everyone seems to read Joan's becoming Chair as a triumph, but I thought it was just a full circle moment. She looked exactly how satisfied as Ji-yoon looked on her first day as Chair. I don't think it implies she stays triumphant or that we should consider this to be about her getting her due.

Good point. 
IRL, in a year or so, Joan would probably get fed up and retire. Maybe a second season would end with this. 
Also IRL, some retired professors are hired back to teach a class or more, so Holland Taylor’s character of Joan could logically continue in the series. 

[possibilities]

I would expect Joan's Chaucer rant to go viral, and her class size to grow, thus keeping her safe from pressure to retire. But then she's have a conflict between the part of her that wants the admin status and the part of her that wants to teach.